Reason has the following three characteristics: it prioritizes the absent over the present, it denies or downplays the function of emotion in consciousness, and it makes humans think themselves exceptional among all living things. Each of these contributes to a human consciousness that both permits destructive behavior and the forgetting or ignoring of it.
The first characteristic is best understood through the unique nature of human language. Our use of discursive language is one of the hallmarks of our human existence, and the hallmark of human language is symbolism. Symbolism is, essentially, naming. A word comes to stand for some object (like “tree”), some idea (like “truth”), or some emotional state (like “fear”). Once it’s meaning is fixed, it is in essence a symbol of the thing it stands for. Instead of the thing, you just need the word to put it in your mind or the mind of anyone else.
Symbolism seems to be simple, but it is awesomely powerful. When words become symbols, we can use them to have meaningful communication – even when the thing we are talking about is not present. Symbolic use of language enables discussion about things that are not present, that were in the past, that might be in the future, that might not ever be, that are possible, that are impossible, etc. Expanding your universe of discourse exponentially outside of what you experience at any given point in time is the apotheosis of power.
This is the transformational nature of the symbolic use of language. We can envision a future that has not yet come – and plan to make it a reality. We can revisit the past in our mind and make it tangible. We can tell stories about characters we have never met, and never will meet. And so much more. We are not bound by the limits of our own senses, and of the immediacy of what they can detect in any given moment.
The seduction of symbolism has consequences. Lived experience through our perception and sensations, once primary, is relegated. Replacing it is our now ‘rich’ inner life of projections into the past, future, possible, might have been, might be, should be, and so on. Anything we can conceive is a legitimate object of our contemplation and demands our mind share. Forget what is there in front of us: our minds now furnish themselves with all the content they will ever need. Close your eyes, plug your ears, shut your mouth: the reality of the present external world recedes, and you can focus on your mind.
What matters now is your relation to your mind – the source and playground for your symbolic conceptions - not lived, present experience. What is absent – past, future, possible – is now more important that what is present to your senses.
Through language, reason disconnects us from the present. What is problematic is that this separation allows us to ignore the realities of our present experience and substitute narratives of our own construction. What happens in the world of our experience becomes our story about what happens. And our stories can impute meaning to our experience that is complete disconnected from what we would see if we were attending to present, lived reality.